Weekly Roundup Sept. 16 - 20, 2019

Among the best stories from Retirement Daily for Sept. 16 - 20: A better "Best Places to Retire" list, fixing common IRA contribution mistakes, and resources to help with hearing loss.

We see "Best Places to Retire" lists all the time. And, often, they are useful, taking into consideration things like culture, weather, the availability of healthcare services and affordability. What they usually lack, however, is the viewpoint of people who actually live in these towns and cities.

That's where Age Friendly Advisor's list is different. Users of Age Friendly Advisor can view and submit reviews on how age friendly their town is across different categories. These are mapped to the official domains established by the World Health Organization (WHO). The WHO's Age Friendly Cities program now boasts more than 1,000 age friendly cities worldwide.

Reviews submitted to agefriendly.com are combined with third-party data on categories such as cost of living and transportation to provide a final score for each town or city. There are over 29,000 rated communities on the site currently, and there are plans to expand the site internationally. Age Friendly Advisor uses many of the same data sources as other "Best Places To Retire" lists, but has a unique categorization method and incorporates user feedback of towns and cities to contribute to a full picture of what aging there is like.

This week on Retirement Daily, we have Age Friendly Advisor's list of the Top 25 Best Places To Retire, highlighting the towns and cities that enable older Americans to most easily stay in their community. After gathering tens of thousands of reviews, Age Friendly Advisor says Silver Spring, Md. tops the list. Other cities on the Top 25 Best Places To Retire list include Boston, New York, Raleigh, N.C., New Orleans, Ft. Lauderdale, and Atlanta. How does your city rank?

Listen up! Jeanette Pavini rounds up resources and assistance to take good care of your hearing. While you're at it, check out her last two Retirement Daily columns on vision (Keep an Eye Out for Good Vision Care) and dental care (Smile: How to Get Dental Care). She writes: "You may have had great insurance -- and great hearing, eyesight and teeth -- while you were working, but it seems like the insurance benefits for these types of healthcare needs are disappearing just when we or our elderly parents need them the most."

Adviser Jim Werner writes: "Lending rates have recently dropped, which creates an opportunity to help you lower your expenses and increase your savings. For those of you that are fortunate to be debt-free, please give thought to someone you care about that might have a mortgage, as this info may help them reduce expenses and increase savings."

Here are some of the latest reports, surveys, and studies related to retirement, including research into the benefits of pet ownership, warnings from the 2019 Medicare trustees' report, and states with the highest and lowest death rates.